A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

TEMPLES OF IBSAMBOUL. 209
we had tested their height as I have ah'eady
stated. On the top of the door there is a
figure of Osiris twenty feet high, with some
hieroglyph ical bas-reliefs of the same dimen-
sions; and the fa9ade of the temple is sur-
mounted by a cornice and frieze covered with
hieroglyphics, over w^hich is a row of sculp-
tured monkeys sitting down, which, compared
with the colossi beneath them, appear little
larger than frogs—they however measure eight
feet in height and six feet across the shoulders.
As the numerous chambers of the temple are
excavated in the rock, into which they pene-
trate one after the other, the first one alone
receives light from without, and is the only
part that can be examined by daylight. This
first chamber is the pronaos, and is supported
by eight square columns, four on either side,
against each of which is placed a colossal stand-
ing statue, twenty-two feet high, every one of
them bearing, according to Champollion, the
precise lineaments of Rhamses the Great (Se-
sostris), in honour of whose warlike achieve-
ments the whole interior decorations of the
temple appear to have been executed. Bel-
zoni is in error when he says that the turbans
of these eight colossi reach the ceiling. In the
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